Aol.com Pages: 235-318

Summary:

With the continuing problems that AOL was facing, hope in the company seemed to diminish. The pornography case went all the way to the Supreme Court and had advocated from both sides fighting furiously for each of their beliefs. Most of those advocated were people from different organizations who fought for children’s rights. Their main goal was to fight for children and protect them from things that might be harmful to their well beings. These advocated were trying to make it part of the law for these pornographic materials to be removed from the internet. AOL the largest internet provider was facing these serious charges and although they specifically weren’t being targeted as distributing these materials, simply because they weren’t, the images, files were still part of AOL’s internet database causing great embarrassment to the company.

After the debate between congress and the advocates for children’s rights it was voted that the “indecent” material would be kept out of the internet, it was passed down to the Supreme court due to the fact that it was against the first amendment(freedom of speech). This all went public and times even created a magazine that displayed AOL on the front cover. It was an embarrassment to the company, but they were able to get over it due to the sales they were still receiving. It was just a bump on the long road that AOL was on.

            Months later, AOL went back into action and went back into the competitive scene with Microsoft. They assimilated with a company called CompuServe, once their biggest rival. This made AOL the largest online internet server once again and it basically crushed all of its competition. It was amazing how this company was one pronounced “dead” and all of a sudden only a few years later they were the top internet providing company that defeated most of its competition.  Competition that was once impossible for them to compete in. Steve Case must have been very proud of his company and the milestones him and his company keep setting.

            So by the end of 1997, AOL was able to add millions of more customers, and create a large boost in the company’s profit. Even then Steve Case was not able to rest. He still couldn’t relax at the thought that things could take a turn for the worst at a time in this success streak the company was going through. Maybe he just needed a little faith?

Quote:

“Just six months before, AOL had been the laughingstock of the online world. Now it was the conqueror” (Swisher 304).

Reaction:

The AOL company went through a lot in the many years it’ been in the business. They went through many situations, both good and bad but that didn’t stop any of the employee’s. Every single day they came back to work and fought to make their company the best company. With their hard work and dedication, they made their company what they always dreamed it would be. Going from a laughingstock to the conqueror of the entire internet world is a wonderful accomplishment; one that I believe should be admired by all tech lovers.

Aol.com Pages: 170 - 235

Summary:

AOL’s good luck streak was quickly ending, especially when they found out that their company was not coming up with the money that they needed in order to keep them running efficiently. They noticed that each day, copious amounts of their customers were cancelling their accounts and leaving AOL. The big question was where all of these costumers were going and what was causing them to leave. This was the question that the executives of AOL had to figure out and fast.

            They came up with the supposed answer. Users did not want to pay for their internet service by the hour. They were not happy with the pricing, which is why many of them were leaving the service. Investors had to come up with ideas to both make money and keep AOL from losing its valued customers. So they developed a scheme where the subscribers would pay a flat rate for certain amount of hours and after they used all of those hours, they would have to continue paying the hourly fees. Many subscribers were unhappy with these problems and other growing problems and some even took it to the next level by filing lawsuits against the company. These problems were just another beginning for AOL.

            One day while one of the executives of AOL was on a vacation in Italy, he went to a nearby café and got a newspaper and on the front cover it read “AOL É Morte” and he didn’t have to be Italian to understand that it meant AOL is dead. What in the world did that mean?

At the same time, Steve Case the president of AOL was at his house also having difficulties connecting to the internet. He went to the nearby facility and saw that the whole system was down, and no one could figure out why. They fixed the problem eventually, but it didn’t stop the names and the mocking. List after list the names just grew, “America Outtaline”, to name one and surprisingly most of this came from 14-15 year old high school students who had a good grasp of internet programing.  

            The problems continued for AOL especially with more lawsuits coming their way. One of the most horrible was one that was brought up about child pornography surfacing throughout the internet. Since it was illegal, pictures of these sexually explicit acts should not have been floating throughout the internet, but they were.

More and more people were starting to disprove of AOL and the things that was running through their internet services. The problem escalated and it became a Supreme Court case. Steve Case, president of the company was becoming more and more overwhelmed at the problems his company seemed to be racking up. He was tired of it and so were many of the other employees of AOL. Unfortunately, they had to face problems because they all knew it was not going to stop anytime soon.

Quote:

‘“At least for them, when the shuttle comes down, the mission is over and they can relax. We never can.”’ (Swisher 179).

Reaction:

When AOL’s online service crashed, they knew they had a huge problem. Millions of their customers depended on them daily, and this would be an enormous setback to all of them.  Matt Korn, an AOL employee compared his job to working on a space shuttle mission, but unlike astronauts their missions never ended. They would always have to monitor everything precisely and make sure that everything is running well at all times. Being an employee at AOL meant you always have to be patient and be willing to understand that you’re always going to have to be prepared for the worst and also be prepared to deal with it.

Aol.com Pages: 105 - 170

Summary:

            As Bill Gates was now in the war with AOL he partnered with an online service called Marvel.  It was going to be designed as an “AOL killer” in taking over much of the popularity AOL got with its new programs within its system. Ted Leonsis, a partner with Steve Case in running AOL made all of the employees interested in their new mission of not letting Microsoft dominate their territory. They started off my expanding their company and buying other small companies that would be to their benefit right under Microsoft’s noses by offering to pay more money. They wanted their company to be very well know, just as how Coca-Cola bottles are everywhere you go, they wanted AOL to have the same effect on costumers.  While they are planning this Microsoft is on to some very cool developments.

            Microsoft wanted to create a system where the costumers would be able to use an online service with the purchase of Windows 95 computer. Since Microsoft had many users, AOL was overwhelmed by the fact that they would be getting a lot of costumers throughout the unveiling of this product. This new system would be called The Microsoft Network also known as “MSN” and was said to being able to attract millions of new subscribers when it is launched.

AOL was seriously trying to compete with this determined company, and they did their best to try to make their system as efficient as possible. When “MSN” was finally released, AOL employees waited in anticipation to see what the outcome would be. Instead of the projected “millions of subscribers”, Microsoft raked in 100,000 new users in the first week and it turned into 190,000 by the end of the first week. After that great start, growth started to become very slow due to the lack of advertising on Microsoft’s part. In celebration they rented a blimp over festivities highlighting that AOL would always be “hovering over them”.

To make matters even more “weird” AOL, after a while made a partnership with Microsoft because it seemed that they each had what the other wanted. After the partnership was announced, AOL’s stocks rose even more. Things were looking really good for AOL. They were expanding their company and at the same time they were developing more skills to make their company one of the best, and on May 30 1996 they announced that they broke the six-million-member mark, making them the largest online provider on the entire globe.

Quote:

‘“I underestimated us and overestimated the competition”’ (Swisher 128).

Reaction:

Whether it’s a about a company or yourself, underestimating yourself is never a good thing. You should never believe that you are unable to do something, especially if you haven’t tried it yourself. When AOL believed that just because Microsoft was owned by one of the richest men in the world, they thought that it would mean that he would have the better services automatically. But that wasn’t true, in fact in the end AOL was the company that came up with the better ideas and was also successful. This proves the well-known saying, “never doubt yourself” and in this case, the company.